My work went a bit quicker today, but slowly nonetheless. It's one of the reasons why I'm feeling stressed at the moment; I've lost a lot of weight lately but it has made me weaker rather than healthier. When I went outside it was too hot for a jumper. Every street is a catwalk for the girls, in big sunglasses, mini-skirts and almost see-through tops. The temperature today was as far above zero as it ever was below it, while I was in Russia during the winter. The river has become the centre of town, especially in the evening, with lots [View Full Entry]

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As I was on my way out this morning I bumped into Kseniya in the lounge. I hadn't spoken any proper Russian for about a week so it was good to have a conversation again. When I sat down to write some more of my essay I realised something. My brain hasn't fully realised how much my Russian has progressed since September, and I am still used to thinking that I will struggle for things to say when I don't any more. If the essay was 5000 words in English and not 3000 in Russian I am convinced I would have [View Full Entry]

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I felt as jaded today as my diary writing must seem. It was the first day that I had set aside to start writing my essay, so I spent the afternoon sat by my kitchen table with a pad of paper, a pen and my books. Getting started is always the hardest part; I wrote a decent introduction, then re-wrote it, then changed my title slightly and made a better plan. Although I need to finish it (2700 words left) before I go to Ukraine I still procrastinate, so every 20 words or so I would find something to eat or [View Full Entry]

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I left the obshezhitie as early as I could this morning to take the elektrichka to Moscow. There was just enough time to queue for a ticket at the train station and find the right platform before 10.15. It was another journey of three hours - the scenery between Tver and Moscow is ugly, with factories and dirty grey buildings on both sides of the track with only a dozen pretty wooden villages to make amends. I arrived to the chaos of Moscow Leningradskii at 1.15, and only got lost once on the metro on the way to see Helen. My [View Full Entry]

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Lyudmila Giorgevna gave a lecture about religion this morning. Her friday classes are always interesting but never too formal, perhaps a way to get everyone into a good mood before the weekend. All the international students at Tv.G.U sit around a table in the middle of a classroom and listen for an hour without taking any notes. Every five minutes or so she loses her train of thought and moves on to talking about something else, which comfortingly is usually how we are all feeling. Russia is a religious country. Many old people kept the Russian Orthodox faith through the years [View Full Entry]

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Literature class isn't compulsory so I had a lie-in until 11. Since Kazan I have been feeling very weak and tired all the time, and sleeping and eating more isn't making a difference. I fall asleep most evenings at about 9 and wake up an hour later, which means I miss the best part of every day. A trip to see Helen in Moscow on saturday should give me some of my energy back, so I can make the most of my last three weeks in Russia. I don't want to let them pass me by, although there isn't much I [View Full Entry]

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In Aleksandr Ivanovich's class this afternoon we translated into Russian 12 signs from shop windows - the type that have their own section in joke books because of an unintentional second meaning. "To anyone who has children and doesn't know it, there is a creche on the first floor." Karin left the obshezhitie today. In the evening we went for a long walk along ulitsa Trekhsvyatskaya and as far as the river, so she could see the town for the last time. It feels as if spring has already passed and it is summer already. The temperature was 20 degrees earlier; [View Full Entry]

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In Zhanna's lesson we watched one of my favourite films, Vozvraschenie. No-one else had seen it before so I was ordered not to give the ending away. At lunchtime Aleksandr Ivanovich took some of us 15 minutes out of town on a trolleybus, to see a gala at the Tverkskaya oblast' House of Culture. About a hundred children from schools all over the region had prepared songs or sketches. Before the curtain went up the woman in charge of the event gave a very long and clichéd welcome speech, then a monk in a long red robe came up onto the [View Full Entry]

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Today was my first day back in lessons, after staying away from them for a little more time than I was allowed. In Lyudmila Giorgevna's class we watched the news, with reports from both Finland and England, then we talked about the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 as wednesday will be the 20th anniversary. In the afternoon I walked around Tver for three hours looking for a barbers shop. I went to every street that I know at least once, and found only a beauty salon for women and a sign saying 'parikmakherskaya', pointing to a basement which was almost pitch dark [View Full Entry]

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The only thing I did this morning was try a new type of toothpaste, Zhemchug, which is flavoured with sea salts rather than mint. Linda left at lunchtime, to get on a train to Petersburg then a bus home to Helsinki. We'll definitely see each other again, hopefully while I'm in Finland this summer. There was another thunderstorm in the late afternoon, which almost put me off my essay-planning. [View Full Entry]

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